Experts say it may have to do with the size of the two markets, for one thing.

So maybe you were lucky enough to get an e-reader for the holidays. In fact, maybe you’re reading this article on one right now! Maybe you’re cozying up to your fire and you’re considering what e-book you want to download to get through these dark winter days.

But you’re an Ars reader, and you actually know (and care!) what DRM stands for. After all, we’ve been covering digital rights management for years, ever since it was a contentious issue in the music industry. You may recall that Amazon itself led the charge against Cupertino, challenging iTunes with cheaper downloads and a lack of DRM. But Amazon's lead in the fight against music DRM was a business decision rather than an ideological stance. You may remember our story from late October 2012, detailing how to strip DRM off of Amazon Kindle purchases as a means of backing up your titles and preventing Amazon from deleting your entire library on a whim.

And that leaves this question: where’s the DRM outrage over e-books? Or put another way, why doesn’t Amazon care about eliminating DRM for books, when it did for music?

For many industry watchers, it comes down to the fact that generally speaking, most people own more individual pieces of music than they do individual books—the American digital music market is still much bigger than the digital book market.

From a cultural standpoint, people want to put music on more devices than they do e-books, and some will want to remix that music. Aside from zombie crossover fanfic, few outside the ivory tower are interested in remixing the written word.

“Most people don’t care about the ethics of DRM or about the finer points of copyright policy,” Aram Sinnreich, a Media Studies professor at Rutgers University, told Ars. “What people care about, is being able to do what they want with the stuff that they think they have.”

But as some smaller publishing houses begin to abandon DRM entirely and users get frustrated with the difficulties in lending e-books, some wonder if this culture may begin to change in 2013.

The "wrong end of the stick" ?

There are authors and anti-DRM advocates who for years have been preaching the gospel of digital liberation of e-books.

That includes Cory Doctorow, who succinctly noted in Publisher’s Weekly earlier this year: “People buy DRM e-books because they have no choice, or because they don’t care about it, or because they don’t know it’s there.”

Doctorow, a well-known science fiction author and the co-founder of Boing Boing, has practiced what he preaches for years. Not only are his books available DRM-free, but they’re also available to download for free.

When Ars asked Doctorow why he thought there wasn’t the same degree of outrage, he dismissed it.

“I think you've got the wrong end of the stick,” he e-mailed. “There is widespread, years-long approbation over e-book DRM.”

While that may be true for the Cory Doctorows of the world, that certainly isn’t true for big-time publishers, for mainstream readers, or for other e-book vendors that are on the scale of Amazon.

A rather cozy birdcage

Perhaps most importantly, Amazon has headed off DRM concerns by making a Kindle book reading application for pretty much every platform imaginable. That way, you can download a Kindle book and read it on your Android, your iPad, or whatever else just as easily as you would on a bona fide Kindle reader. (Amazon did not respond to Ars’ repeated requests for comment.)

“Kudos to Amazon for designing it in such a way that consumers would be comfortable,” Sinnreich quipped.

Whether the company has intended it or not, most consumers are blissfully unaware of the realities of DRM because any Kindle book can be read on just about every device. But in fact, it wasn't very long ago that Amazon was at the forefront of this battle against sharing restrictions when it came to music.

"Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement in 2007.

Likely due to pressure from consumers and from Amazon, one record label after another began to agree to drop DRM on iTunes. By early 2009, DRM was formally, finally, dead—with all the labels on board.

Vampire-themed Jane Austen books aside, who remixes books, anyway?

Part of the lack of outrage, experts say, can be explained simply by the smaller market.

According to the NPD Group, digital-music revenue in the United States, not including streaming services, amounted to $2.1 billion in 2011. By comparison, e-books spending is smaller, with research from the Association of American Publishers placing revenue at nearly $1 billion.

Part of the reason may be impulse purchasing—it’s a lot easier to spontaneously buy an MP3 at $0.99 rather than an e-book at $9.99! But that isn't the only explanation that's been offered. “Maybe it's the low status of books in general,” Alissa Quart, the editor-at-large at The Atavist, “Book buyers don't get to get as outraged as music fans.”

Similarly, we’re all more likely to want to re-listen to older songs multiple times—and consequently, put them on multiple devices—than books, which tend to get read once and kept on a bookshelf (digital or analog.)

“You tend to re-visit old music more than old books,” said Parker Higgins, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Some of that is the maturity of the ecosystem.”

Another possible explanation over the lack of outrage is that within music, not only is the market larger, but there’s more of a tradition of turning the original work (a song) into a derivative work, like a remix.

“When iTunes was introduced no one was thinking: ‘When I buy this, can I cut it up into ringtones?’” Higgins added. “They weren't thinking, ‘Can I set this to a rhythm game and play fake guitar to this?’ Because people love music, there's avenues for that remix. With books, especially with e-books, books as codecs aren't a very remixable form. People don't really know to do anything with them except start at the beginning and read to the end.”

He added that it may take awhile before authors and other developers come up with new applications that can take advantage of an open, DRM-less e-book.

“For example, a music player that matches sentiment through textual analysis—that would be possible with a [public domain e-book], but not be possible with a Kindle book,” Higgins said.

Quart, who is also author of the forthcoming book, The Republic of Outsiders, agreed, saying that even the biggest literary fans generally don’t do much besides read or perhaps quote other works that they like.

“There's not really a culture of remix amongst book readers,” she said. “There's a literary culture of appropriation and interesting fair use but I don't think a lot of readers have that relationship to it.”

Looking to the Cloud

However, one element of books versus music that experts say may even drive a cultural change in the publishing industry is the idea of borrowing books.

One of the major elements that drove the death of DRM was the ability to put music tracks in any format, in any device. Similarly, some speculate that it will take more time for enough e-book owners who want to share their favorite reads and be frustrated at that experience.

But borrowing may become a moot point if e-books start to be re-imaged as a service, rather than a product. If the music industry is any indication, then perhaps the publishing industry will start moving towards all-you-can-eat, cloud-based services. Few services like that, on a massive scale, exist here in the US.

However, a young Madrid-based startup may represent the future. 24Symbols is trying to become the Spotify of e-books.

"I want to watch a movie? Why download it when I can just go to a place like Hulu or Netflix and see it streamed?" Justo Hidalgo, co-founder of 24symbols, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle last year. "So we believe that's something that's starting to happen in the book industry. I mean, we know that because many people read on-screen and many people read without needing to own the content that they have, so that's what we call like the change, or the shift from the book as a product to book as a service.”

140 Reader Comments

"I want to watch a movie? Why download it when I can just go to a place like Hulu or Netflix and see it streamed?" Justo Hidalgo, co-founder of 24symbols, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle last year.

I will tell you why. Because "this content is not available in your country". That's why. Until that changes it will always be easier to go and download it.

Consumers don't care as long as it is easy. There was still the 30% if the MP3 player market not controlled by apple, so you have a demand for non drm music. But because of kindle's ubiquity, you don't have that issue.

What is really like to see Ars ask is why is DRM still on movies! And not only is it on movies, but the arms race is still escalating - better BR copy protection, technology in players to detect ripped movies (Cinavia), etc.

Thanks for pointing me to 24Symbols. Their website is very easy to navigate, and I just started reading the book about Tintin. It seems all the classics are there, which is great. I downloaded the iPad app, but unfortunately it does not let me log in. I keep getting a "slow or failed connection with a server", so I can't judge how good the app is. But from the browser screen shot it looks like reading will be very similar to the Books app. I hope they improve their servers, because right now the service is unusable on the iPad for me.

Edit: They have severe login problems, and the reader is misbehaving in the browser. Your experience may differ, but I am abandoning this service.

I voted with my wallet, I refuse to purchase an eBook reader until there's no DRM. I'd love a nook, but my dream of a DRM free eBook that comes with every purchase of a hardcopy book is still far far away.

I voted with my wallet, I refuse to purchase an eBook reader until there's no DRM. I'd love a nook, but my dream of a DRM free eBook that comes with every purchase of a hardcopy book is still far far away.

I'm the same way at the moment. I lost my kindle and haven't replaced it because it is wrong to me that I'm not permitted to move my content to another non kindle platform. We need either the vendors to remove the DRM or the Library of Congress to grant personal use of ebooks (and DVD and BD) a permanent exemption to DCMA.

What about libraries? Most of the books i read are from my local library and you can even borrow e-books from there, although the selection isn't very good yet but it's getting better all the time.

ivantod wrote:

Quote:

"I want to watch a movie? Why download it when I can just go to a place like Hulu or Netflix and see it streamed?" Justo Hidalgo, co-founder of 24symbols, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle last year.

I will tell you why. Because "this content is not available in your country". That's why. Until that changes it will always be easier to go and download it.

Try the extension Media Hint for FF and Chrome. It gives (american) access to Netflix, Hulu and Pandora from anywhere.

Not only e-books, it seems more people want to overlook the DRM that is becoming dominant in paid apps on Android, particularly for anything bought through Google Play.

This is effectively a mechanism to allow Google to lock you into a Google-approved version of Android (no forks allowed), encourage their 30% cut on sales, and makes a mockery of Android's "openness".

Android desperately needs something like an app store for paid apps which would guarantee DRM-free sales; perhaps this could be realised by such a store giving a greater % margin to the developer, therefore encouraging developers to abandon the need for DRM.

By comparison, e-books spending is vastly smaller—totaling just $21.5 million in the same year. (After all, it’s a lot easier to spontaneously buy an MP3 at $0.99 rather than an e-book at $9.99!)

This is half of why music will out-earn eBooks. There are plenty of books I'd like to read, but at $15 a pop, it'll be some time before I purchase it. (Considering the paperback will be out in ~3 months, and cost $8).

The other half is that a song takes ~3 minutes to consume, and repeated listening is fine. A book can take weeks, and not many people re-read their books often.

Just a reminder that Amazon does not compel publishers to use DRM. I have sold and bought many e-books at Amazon that have no DRM at all. You need a utility to convert the files into another format if you want to read them on another reader, but those are easily available.

Wow. I'm amazed that the article seemed to miss what seems to me to be the biggest and most obvious reason for the difference in Amazon's behavior. For music they were attacking the dominate player (Apple and iTunes) who had control of not only the music store for downloads but most of the player market as well. Really the only way for them to have any hope of competing with Apple was to do unprotected MP3's. There wasn't any other way for them to be able to provide files playable on iPods and the large array of third party devices. They made their choice out of simple necessity not some idealistic motivation to benefit consumers.

When it comes to ebooks it's much different. They are one of the major players and can benefit from locking people into their ecosystem with e-readers, tablets and even just their app on many different platforms.

"I want to watch a movie? Why download it when I can just go to a place like Hulu or Netflix and see it streamed?" Justo Hidalgo, co-founder of 24symbols, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle last year.

Here's another reason why: I do most of my daily reading underground, on a train, where there's no network coverage. It's either download or do something else.

I honestly don't care about DRM on e-books because I don't buy e-books.

I buy books. Physical books. I sit them on my shelf, I loan them to friends, to family, and I reread them.

I pay about $7 for a physical book.

If I want to buy an e-book, I pay $14 to $21 per book.

That is absolutely insane, and I refuse to pay more for a restricted use, cheap to reproduce electronic book than a physical book. If they drop the price of electronic books to less than the price of a physical book, I might consider getting it. Right now, buying them is insane.

Consumers don't care as long as it is easy. There was still the 30% if the MP3 player market not controlled by apple, so you have a demand for non drm music. But because of kindle's ubiquity, you don't have that issue.

Not really. There are other ereaders such as the regular Nook and the Kobo ereader that probably have a similar share.

Consumers don't care as long as it is easy. There was still the 30% if the MP3 player market not controlled by apple, so you have a demand for non drm music. But because of kindle's ubiquity, you don't have that issue.

Not really. There are other ereaders such as the regular Nook and the Kobo ereader that probably have a similar share.

It's not the Kindle itself that is ubiquitous. It's the app that's ubiquitous.

Even Apple users end up using the Kindle app and the Amazon bookstore. The same goes for Android users. I can (and do) have a collection of Apple, Amazon, and Android devices and they all sync to the same user account.

I think the real reason is that people don't, generally, read books over and over again, the way that they will listen to an album over and over again. While there is a desire to lend books that is frustrated by DRM, I don't know how strong that really is. So, if people get a book on their e-reader, and maybe they also *could* read it on the web, PC, phone or whatever, it's convenient *enough*, and they only have to make it work for, normally, a single read-through. Next year, if they get a new eReader, and some of their e-books aren't able to transfer, because it's a different vendor, well, they probably weren't going to re-read that book anyway.

I do not buy e-books and the reason is DRM. Yes, there are some uninfected books out there but DRM and devices which restrict me are the norm. I don't want to put in the time learning what device or publisher might be tolerable. They simply don't get my money.

By comparison, e-books spending is vastly smaller—totaling just $21.5 million in the same year.

Big Whoops! there. The report you use as a source was examining export trade from US publishers - only counting sales of books into overseas territories. Domestic book sales in the US come to rather more than that: 2011 saw ebooks account for $1.1-$1.97bn in sales, approximately 16% of the total book market. This varies by publisher, Macmillan sees ebooks make up 24% of their sales. Sales this year indicate that ebooks may be reaching a plateau: there haven't been the massive 200-300% increases seen in previous years, but it's definitely a big-money business.

Quote:

few outside the ivory tower are interested in remixing the written word.

Maybe not the word as such, since we're interested in maintaining the integrity of the text, but I certainly remix the shoddy and amateurish typography used in the vast bulk of releases. I need to re-set the vast majority of ebooks I get in order to produce something readable to the same standard we have come to expect in print.

One last thing you really should have mentioned: Macmillan dropped DRM this year on their TOR line, and John Sargent has acknowleged that this experiment has not resulted in an increase in piracy. One can only hope that this leads to them dropping it on their other imprints as well and other publishers follow in their footsteps. Anyone who wants to pirate a book knows how to strip the DRM - all it does is lock customers into a particular ecosystem, which is what the publishers claim to be worried about with the Amazon/Apple fiasco.

I think that a large part of the reason there is still so much DRM on ebooks is the lack of easy alternatives. Music that isn't already an MP3 files is on CDs. CDs are dead simple to convert to an MP3, there are a ton of free, automatic programs that will do so. You just stick the CD in the drive, wait a little while and it's done.On the other hand, digitizing even a single book is a major process, taking dozens of man-hours for each one.

And once again, you guys failed to mention Baen Books. They have always had DRM free ebooks, they even give away a considerable amount of their books for free.

One thing about the ebook industry that differs greatly from the digital music industry is that there's no good way of 'transferring' your current paper books to an ebook reader.

With music, I can fairly easily rip my CDs into mp3s and transfer to my digital audio device.

With books, I don't have a mechanism to transfer my paper books to my ebook reader. (scanning each page individually from each book isn't a very a good solution) I have a Kindle, and I'd use it more if I could move my current paper books over to my device.

It seems like stores like Amazon should automatically offer the ebook file when you purchase the paper book (or make it available for something trivial, like $1).

I honestly don't care about DRM on e-books because I don't buy e-books.

I buy books. Physical books. I sit them on my shelf, I loan them to friends, to family, and I reread them.

I pay about $7 for a physical book.

If I want to buy an e-book, I pay $14 to $21 per book.

That is absolutely insane, and I refuse to pay more for a restricted use, cheap to reproduce electronic book than a physical book. If they drop the price of electronic books to less than the price of a physical book, I might consider getting it. Right now, buying them is insane.

It's the combination of price and DRM for me. E-Books are being priced like hardcovers, which is ridiculous. The publishers and retailers save an incredible amount of money on production, shipping and storage with E-Books vs traditional hardcovers, but those savings aren't being passed along to the consumer.

At the same time a hardcover book can easily last pretty much forever, while a DRM-laden e-book has a lifespan that is only guaranteed for the life of the device it's purchased on. If I change e-reader ecosystems in the future, or if Amazon or B&N decide to change their DRM scheme, is there any guarantee I don't lose access ten years from now to the book I bought today?

One thing about the ebook industry that differs greatly from the digital music industry is that there's no good way of 'transferring' your current paper books to an ebook reader.

With music, I can fairly easily rip my CDs into mp3s and transfer to my digital audio device.

With books, I don't have a mechanism to transfer my paper books to my ebook reader. (scanning each page individually from each book isn't a very a good solution) I have a Kindle, and I'd use it more if I could move my current paper books over to my device.

It seems like stores like Amazon should automatically offer the ebook file when you purchase the paper book (or make it available for something trivial, like $1).

Or make an app that uses the camera available in many e-reading devices today to scan the barcode of any book you have, which would then automatically queue up a free download of the e-version of that book, since you've already bought it.

There wouldn't be anything stopping users from just scanning barcodes of books their friends own, or from books they've checked out from the library, but there's nothing stopping me from burning copies for friends' CDs or copying CDs I check out from the library either, and that doesn't seem to have hurt the online music industry.

EDIT:

To make such a system more secure (and to prevent someone from just walking through the aisles at a physical book store and scanning every book) there could be an ownership check involved. After scanning the barcode, at a randomly determined time interval, say, between 1 and 24 hours, the e-reader will prompt the owner to photograph a randomly selected page from the work, which can then verify that the book is actually in that person's possession.

At the same time a hardcover book can easily last pretty much forever, while a DRM-laden e-book has a lifespan that is only guaranteed for the life of the device it's purchased on. If I change e-reader ecosystems in the future, or if Amazon or B&N decide to change their DRM scheme, is there any guarantee I don't lose access ten years from now to the book I bought today?

Well, in all honesty it should be said that both Amazon and B&N DRM schemes are very easy to break. It's true that you should not NEED to do this, but it is there as an option (however crappy option it may be).

There was a statement from John Sargent of Macmillan last week that briefly addressed this among other things.

Quote:

And we will keep experimenting to determine the best way forward. This year we went DRM-free at TOR. It is still too early to tell the outcome, but initial results suggest there was no increase in piracy.

I think DRM in ebooks will go away, and we're seeing the acceleration of the process now.

I work for Brandon Sanderson, and this year we released two novellas DRM-free that are selling very well. And his other books from Tor were widely pirated before Tor went DRM-free, and they don't seem to be any more pirated now. But more important is readers being able to read as they choose, and the publishers not having platform lock-in (to Amazon, especially). Being DRM-free has also allowed Tor to easily license other ebook stores to carry their books without having to worry about the complexities DRM introduces. The Wheel of Time fansite Dragonmount started their own DRM-free bookstore this year (with mostly Tor books) and that wouldn't have been possible without DRM being dropped. A publisher would be short-sighted to turn down additional revenue streams such as that one.

[EDIT: I see that John Sargent's quote was mentioned already a few comments up.]

I voted with my wallet, I refuse to purchase an eBook reader until there's no DRM. I'd love a nook, but my dream of a DRM free eBook that comes with every purchase of a hardcopy book is still far far away.

It is possible to take a step in that direction. I bought a Nook Simple Touch because there was a very simple key sequence online that removed all dependency on their store. It allowed me to use it entirely offline, even though B&N would prefer to keep control of me, my device, and my saleable reading-habit database.

Finding no-DRM versions of almost any ebook is also easy, though not as easy as turning control of your device, reading history profile, and credit card over to a company.

The existing ecosystem can continue unchanged if everyone is happy with it. Alternately, DRM will be dropped if enough people prefer to go around it, as was the case with mp3 files.

There was a statement from John Sargent of Macmillan last week that briefly addressed this among other things.

Quote:

And we will keep experimenting to determine the best way forward. This year we went DRM-free at TOR. It is still too early to tell the outcome, but initial results suggest there was no increase in piracy.

I think DRM in ebooks will go away, and we're seeing the acceleration of the process now.

I work for Brandon Sanderson, and this year we released two novellas DRM-free that are selling very well. And his other books from Tor were widely pirated before Tor went DRM-free, and they don't seem to be any more pirated now. But more important is readers being able to read as they choose, and the publishers not having platform lock-in (to Amazon, especially). Being DRM-free has also allowed Tor to easily license other ebook stores to carry their books without having to worry about the complexities DRM introduces. The Wheel of Time fansite Dragonmount started their own DRM-free bookstore this year (with mostly Tor books) and that wouldn't have been possible without DRM being dropped. A publisher would be short-sighted to turn down additional revenue streams such as that one.

I've long suspected (and written elsewhere) that pirates generally are going to pirate regardless, with the single exception of the class of people who want to buy it but can't, usually because of international license restrictions or the like. Reasonable prices for ebooks and high availability will go a long way toward creating profits where they weren't necessarily before, and the lack of DRM is just good form: it lets the customers buy a book that they can take with them, not just a particular container that they may or may not be able to take with them.

For music they were attacking the dominate player (Apple and iTunes) who had control of not only the music store for downloads but most of the player market as well. Really the only way for them to have any hope of competing with Apple was to do unprotected MP3's. There wasn't any other way for them to be able to provide files playable on iPods and the large array of third party devices. They made their choice out of simple necessity not some idealistic motivation to benefit consumers.

But Amazon was only able to "attack" the dominant player in the market because the content owners were looking to weaken Apple's pricing control of digital music. Especially the fact that Apple's one-price model didn't allow for higher prices on 'hit' songs while they were hot commodities.

Apple was contractually obligated to use DRM, so Amazon & others [Walmart?] were given the ability to sell non-DRM'd music as long as they allowed the content owners a say in pricing. (eventually, after initially being allowed to undercut Apple's $0.99-per-song price)

Why I don't buy eBooks:1) DRM - it's a matter of principles for me2) I can't (easily) rip my physical books into eBook form like I can with CDs and Blu-rays.3) But most of all, they cost more than the damn paperback version!! >:(

I'd be enticed into using eBooks if I got a free DRM-free copy with the purchase of a physical book.

Or make an app that uses the camera available in many e-reading devices today to scan the barcode of any book you have, which would then automatically queue up a free download of the e-version of that book, since you've already bought it.

There wouldn't be anything stopping users from just scanning barcodes of books their friends own, or from books they've checked out from the library, but there's nothing stopping me from burning copies for friends' CDs or copying CDs I check out from the library either, and that doesn't seem to have hurt the online music industry.

1. Sounds like Delicious Library, which uses the camera to scan barcodes of books to set-up a database of all the books in your possession... note that I didn't say the books you own.

I have a problem with free e-books just because you have access to the retail version. It seems like there should be some nominal value associated with e-books - especially for older works that have to be scanned & cleaned-up to have a readable file. Although modern works - which were digital from the get-go - would be harder to justify a significant fee for the e-book version.

2. Ripping CDs and/or DVDs will have no impact on the online music sales, because most of online music sales are of individual tracks, not entire albums. Ripping only reduces the sales of physical media, not electronic media, IMHO.

I think the article missed or didn't choose to address two key differences between the music and the book industries as it relates to DRM.

The first one is that e-readers don't work as MP3 player in that you can't digitalize your book collection in the same way you could your CDs to get a non-DRMed version so there is no direct competition from the real book market.

The second one is that Publishers are much more wary of Amazon than record Label ever were. Amazon has been worrying the book industry sick since way before it started its kindle program. I think it will need more time or market pressure from the ebook market to be able to constrain publishers into dropping DRM (admitting they would actually want to in the first place).

"So we believe that's something that's starting to happen in the book industry. I mean, we know that because many people read on-screen and many people read without needing to own the content that they have, so that's what we call like the change, or the shift from the book as a product to book as a service.”

Consumers don't care as long as it is easy. There was still the 30% if the MP3 player market not controlled by apple, so you have a demand for non drm music. But because of kindle's ubiquity, you don't have that issue.

Not really. There are other ereaders such as the regular Nook and the Kobo ereader that probably have a similar share.

It's not the Kindle itself that is ubiquitous. It's the app that's ubiquitous.

Even Apple users end up using the Kindle app and the Amazon bookstore. The same goes for Android users. I can (and do) have a collection of Apple, Amazon, and Android devices and they all sync to the same user account.

Amazon builds a nicer cage than Apple does.

DRM still sucks though.

I buy books from all three for my iPad. That includes iBooks, the Kindle app, and the Nook app, plus a number of other places for paid, and free content. there are a number of publishers that offer their books as DRM-free on ibooks, the Kindle app, and I suppose from the Nook app as well, though I haven't gotten any free ones from that one yet.

I think another reason why most books are still using DRM is also because they cost so much more than just a song. In addition, I'd like to make it clear that while Amazon began to offer DRM-free songs before Apple did, Apple had been calling on music publishers to do so for years. Publishers offered it first on Amazon with the hope it would increase their sales to the point where Apple's marketshare would drop, but that didn't work, so they allowed Apple to offer it shortly afterwards.

This is really out of the hands of the sellers. It's the publishers that need to be convinced.

There is a difference between what people are willing to accept in their "music" purchases and in their "book" purchases, due to technological differences in delivery systems over the consumers' lifetimes.

I'm pushing 50 years old. In my lifetime, delivery systems for music have been on vinyl records, then 8-tracks, then cassette tapes, then CDs, then mp3s.

In that same time, books have been available on... books. And only recently (by comparison), e-books.

The difference is this: over a lifetime, the transition from different media has taught consumers that in music, the content is different than the way that content is transferred to them. Look at the language in the article and the comments. People speak of buying music. They no longer speak of buying records, or tapes -- they used to! Now they only speak of records and tapes when they're specifically buying that type of physical object. Today you buy music -- and the type of format that it's in is pretty much irrelevant.

Books have not gone through that mental adjustment in the minds of most consumers. People still speak of buying books -- even when what they're buying is a digital file. The mental separation of the content and the delivery medium has not taken place yet in books like it has in music.

I only realized this when I got a Kindle myself. I resisted doing so for a long time, because I love books. Then I suddenly realized that I pretty much don't love books -- I love stories. I confused the two because in most of my life I could only get stories via books (leaving aside shorter stories in newspapers and magazines, which are just books with different, or missing, binding).

When people stop talking about the book market, and start talking about something else -- the "story market" or the "text market", then things will start to really change.